‘India will need to pay a lot more for Russian carrier’

New Delhi, Feb 27 (IANS) India will have to pay substantially more for an aircraft carrier it has purchased from Russia as the $970 million previously agreed to was not “doable”, a senior defence ministry official said Wednesday. “The figure of $970 million is perhaps not seriously doable,” Defence Secretary Vijay Singh, who has just returned from Moscow after discussions on the Russian demand for an additional $1.2 billion for the Admiral Gorshkov, told reporters here.

“It’s hard to put a figure. It could be even more than that,” Singh said, adding that the two countries hoped to resolve the issue by the end of March.